"In the 1930s a girl in Mexico found two skulls and brought them to the U.S. One was a normal human, the other was something else. Since 1999, Lloyd Pye has coordinated the extensive scientific testing of both skulls. The Starchild Skull is a charmingly wry, addictively readable book chronicling Pye’s odyssey with the skulls."--From the publisher.

"In the 1930s a girl in Mexico found two skulls and brought them to the U.S. One was a normal human, the other was something else. Since 1999, Lloyd Pye has coordinated the extensive scientific testing of both skulls. The Starchild Skull is a charmingly wry, addictively readable book chronicling Pye’s odyssey with the skulls."--From the publisher.

The origin of life, particularly human life, is one of today’s most intensely debated subjects. Ironically, that debate has only two socially acceptable sides: Darwinism and Creationism. Darwinists support the detailed observations and speculations of a brilliant naturalist, while Creationists support the various interpreters of the Bible’s scriptural teachings. Despite the passion and intellect exhibited by both sides as they defend their positions, millions of people remain unconvinced by the arguments of either. For those individuals, it is time to present a viable, comprehensive, third option, Rationalism, which is the formation of ideas and opinions based on evidence and reasoning rather than on secular authority or divine revelation. Everything You Know Is Wrong stakes out a solid, defendable, entirely new position in the debate about life origins and human origins. That position is bolstered by an astonishing array of scientific facts either unmentioned or conspicuously ignored by the two currently entrenched camps. By utilizing such a fact-based format, this book’s presentation of Rationalism offers a far more convincing explanation for the origins of life, and particularly of human life, than Darwinism or Creationism ever have….or ever will.

Fiftieth anniversary reissue of the founding media studies book that helped establish media art as a cultural category. First published in 1970, Gene Youngblood’s influential Expanded Cinema was the first serious treatment of video, computers, and holography as cinematic technologies. Long considered the bible for media artists, Youngblood’s insider account of 1960s counterculture and the birth of cybernetics remains a mainstay reference in today’s hypermediated digital world. This fiftieth anniversary edition includes a new Introduction by the author that offers conceptual tools for understanding the sociocultural and sociopolitical realities of our present world. A unique eyewitness account of burgeoning experimental film and the birth of video art in the late 1960s, this far- ranging study traces the evolution of cinematic language to the end of fiction, drama, and realism. Vast in scope, its prescient formulations include “the paleocybernetic age,” “intermedia,” the “artist as design scientist,” the “artist as ecologist,” “synaesthetics and kinesthetics,” and “the technosphere: man/machine symbiosis.” Outstanding works are analyzed in detail. Methods of production are meticulously described, including interviews with artists and technologists of the period, such as Nam June Paik, Jordan Belson, Andy Warhol, Stan Brakhage, Carolee Schneemann, Stan VanDerBeek, Les Levine, and Frank Gillette. An inspiring Introduction by the celebrated polymath and designer R. Buckminster Fuller—a perfectly cut gem of countercultural thinking in itself—places Youngblood’s radical observations in comprehensive perspective. Providing an unparalleled historical documentation, Expanded Cinema clarifies a chapter of countercultural history that is still not fully represented in the arthistorical record half a century later. The book will also inspire the current generation of artists working in ever-newer expansions of the cinematic environment and will prove invaluable to all who are concerned with the technologies that are reshaping the nature of human communication.

The Essential Cult TV Reader is a collection of insightful essays that examine television shows that amass engaged, active fan bases by employing an imaginative approach to programming. Once defined by limited viewership, cult TV has developed its own identity, with some shows gaining large, mainstream audiences. By exploring the defining characteristics of cult TV, The Essential Cult TV Reader traces the development of this once obscure form and explains how cult TV achieved its current status as legitimate television. The essays explore a wide range of cult programs, from early shows such as Star Trek, The Avengers, Dark Shadows, and The Twilight Zone to popular contemporary shows such as Lost, Dexter, and 24, addressing the cultural context that allowed the development of the phenomenon. The contributors investigate the obligations of cult series to their fans, the relationship of camp and cult, the effects of DVD releases and the Internet, and the globalization of cult TV. The Essential Cult TV Reader answers many of the questions surrounding the form while revealing emerging debates on its future.

"Everything You Know Is STILL Wrong" updates and expands on Lloyd Pye's ground-breaking theories. He explains how everything from our understanding of the formation of planet Earth to macroevolution is based on theories that only tell part of the story and may not be entirely accurate. Central to the book is "Intervention Theory", the controversial but surprisingly fact-based idea that aliens intervened in Earth's early history to build life as we know it.Twenty years after the original "Everything You Know Is Wrong" was published (in 1997), science has dramatically advanced our knowledge and understanding. Yet much of what we think we all know is actually nothing more than theories based on flawed assumptions that can actually be proved wrong... And that proof is referenced in the pages of "Everything You Know Is STILL Wrong". Lloyd Pye sadly passed away in 2013, but the copious notes and drafts that he left behind have been diligently pieced together and supplemented with new discoveries and up-to-date facts. Although this book is intended to be an updated version of the original, this new edition truly stands alone as an almost completely new work.Over 600 pagesOver 150 Black & White ImagesPaperback

The classic work on the music of Afrofuturism, from jazz to jungle More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction is one of the most extraordinary books on music ever written. Part manifesto for a militant posthumanism, part journey through the unacknowledged traditions of diasporic science fiction, this book finds the future shock in Afrofuturist sounds from jazz, dub and techno to funk, hip hop and jungle. By exploring the music of such musical luminaries as Sun Ra, Alice Coltrane, Lee Perry, Dr Octagon, Parliament and Underground Resistance, theorist and artist Kodwo Eshun mobilises their concepts in order to open the possibilities of sonic fiction: the hitherto unexplored intersections between science fiction and organised sound. Situated between electronic music history, media theory, science fiction and Afrodiasporic studies, More Brilliant than the Sun is one of the key works to stake a claim for the generative possibilities of Afrofuturism. Much referenced since its original publication in 1998, but long unavailable, this new edition includes an introduction by Kodwo Eshun as well as texts by filmmaker John Akomfrah and producer Steve Goodman aka kode9.

Women occupy a privileged place in horror film. Horror is a space of entertainment and excitement, of terror and dread, and one that relishes the complexities that arise when boundaries – of taste, of bodies, of reason – are blurred and dismantled. It is also a site of expression and exploration that leverages the narrative and aesthetic horrors of the reproductive, the maternal and the sexual to expose the underpinnings of the social, political and philosophical othering of women. This book offers an in-depth analysis of women in horror films through an exploration of ‘gynaehorror’: films concerned with all aspects of female reproductive horror, from reproductive and sexual organs, to virginity, pregnancy, birth, motherhood and finally to menopause. Some of the themes explored include: the intersection of horror, monstrosity and sexual difference; the relationships between normative female (hetero)sexuality and the twin figures of the chaste virgin and the voracious vagina dentata; embodiment and subjectivity in horror films about pregnancy and abortion; reproductive technologies, monstrosity and ‘mad science’; the discursive construction and interrogation of monstrous motherhood; and the relationships between menopause, menstruation, hagsploitation and ‘abject barren’ bodies in horror. The book not only offers a feminist interrogation of gynaehorror, but also a counter-reading of the gynaehorrific, that both accounts for and opens up new spaces of productive, radical and subversive monstrosity within a mode of representation and expression that has often been accused of being misogynistic. It therefore makes a unique contribution to the study of women in horror film specifically, while also providing new insights in the broader area of popular culture, gender and film philosophy.

"Elongated human skulls have been found in the archaeological record on every inhabited continent, and most commonly these people existed about 2000 years ago. The vast majority were elite members of various societies and artificial cranial deformation was performed on them as infants in order to achieve a specific look so as to differentiate them from the general public. Nowhere was this more commonplace than in Peru and Bolivia, and this book sets out to figure out where these societies lived, when, and how they may have been related. The most mysterious aspect is that some of the ancient people of Peru and Bolivia may have in fact been born with elongated skulls. Should this turn out through medical examination to be true, the history of humanity many have to be re-written."--Supplied by publisher